It would not, then, be surprising if something of the sort has come to pass in the present instance, where you think that you will gain the greatest credit if you conceal for the longest possible time the purpose you had in mind when you worked out your discourse, whereas I think that you will best succeed if you can with the least possible delay publish the thought by which you were governed when you composed it to all the world and especially to the Lacedaemonians, whom you have often discussed, sometimes with fairness and dignity, but then again with recklessness and extreme captiousness.

“For if one were to show them a discourse of the latter sort before I had explained it to them, they would inevitably hate you and dislike you for having written in denunciation of them. As it is, I think that while most of the Lacedaemonians will continue to abide in the ways to which they have been faithful in past times and will pay no more attention to what is written in Athens than to what is said beyond the Pillars of Heracles,